Narrative? We don't need no stinkin' narrative!

Narrative? We don't need no stinkin' narrative!

There's quite a raging discussion going on over at the 1up Yours board about narrative in games. While I'm a huge proponent of the whole idea, I've been thinking about games that have been successful without relying on a narrative much or at all.

I seem to keep coming back to Nintendo lately, but they're a great example of people making games that are insanely fun based on gameplay alone. Come on, when has a Mario platformer been bad?